About this book:

• This book provides an exhaustive overview of the Liver and its diseases in children. The Editors have undertaken the mission of producing an easily understandable, yet comprehensive reference book that can be a valuable source of up-to-date information on the subject. Arranged in 8 sections comprising 48 chapters, it covers the entire spectrum of topics from basic anatomy and physiology to the future therapy of liver diseases. The strength of this book is the carefully chosen authors from across the world, who are all outstanding clinicians with vast experience in the field. Together they offer the readers an excellent background for the practice of pediatric hepatology with particular emphasis on diseases in developing countries. In this electronic era, information is available instantly at the click of a button. However, for a thorough understanding of any subject, that is a weak substitute for a well-written textbook. Preface This book achieves the long felt need for a reference book on liver and its diseases in chil-dren from a South East Asian perspective. In the last three decades, no area of child health has advanced as much as the diagnosis and treatment of liver diseases. It is a remarkable story of transformation from helplessness to hope, the idiopathic to proven etiologies, untreatable to potential cure, and from lack of expertise and infrastructure to an abundance of it. It marks the march from a host of conditions like Indian childhood cirrhosis and Idiopathic liver failure to pre¬ventable infectious diseases as well as treatable causes of neonatal cholestasis, metabolic liver diseases, and liver failure. Liver transplantation is not a mirage, but a reality across all regions of the country. The expertise and competence currently available in India rival the best the world can offer. The challenge today is to ensure that this knowledge and expertise reaches practicing pediatricians, to enable early suspicion and prompt diagnosis